Bombay Sapphire Accidentally Sold 154-Proof Gin

If you'd had a gin martini in Canada lately and noticed it hitting you harder than usual, it's not that you're suddenly a lightweight. Bombay Sapphire Gin is recalling bottles from at least eight Canadian provinces after the Liquor Bar of Ontario discovered that some bottles hadn't been properly diluted, giving them more than double the alcohol percentage in them than advertised. The bottles advertised the gin at 40 percent alcohol, or about 80 proof. But up to 1,000 cases of 1.14 liter bottles of Bombay Sapphire London Gin had 77 percent alcohol, making them 154 proof. That is pretty seriously alcoholic. For some perspective, Everclear, that tasteless but heavy-hitting favorite of frat parties everywhere, comes in at just 151 proof. (There is also a version that's 95 percent alcohol by volume, or 190 proof.)

According to Bacardi, Bombay Sapphire's parent company, the overproofing mistake was a result of when some bottles "inadvertently entered the bottling line during a short period of time (max 45 minutes) when they were switching from one bottling tank to another bottling tank."

How do you know if your bottle is one of the overproof one being recalled? First, unless you got the bottle from Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Alberta, or Saskatchewan, you have nothing to worry about. If you happened to have picked up there recently, the Liquor Bar recommends checking the label. The undiluted bottles have the product code "L16304." They've already been removed from shelves, but if you have one, you can return it for a refund. There haven't been any reported illnesses from the gin, but Bacardi does not recommend drinking it.